In some cases, there are decks that don't counter you, but there are decks that just have a much faster engine than yours.

Okay, so after building a main deck, most people should instantly notice the deck's weaknesses. (No deck is perfect, even tier 1 decks.) Ideally, you want to side against decks that counter you. Because of this, there are a variety of things to look at when building the side deck, and figuring out how to side deck against other decks.

The things to consider are: - What types of decks counter my deck? - How can I slow down the decks countering my deck, or how can I completely get around a deck that counters my deck?- What is my opponent going to side against me?- What cards in my main deck are useless against my opponent?- What cards do I need to take out if all of my cards are useful?

The first thing to look at is "What types of decks counter my deck?" THIS IS THE MAIN GOAL OF SIDE-DECKING. So pretty much, you need to first know your deck's weaknesses. When you know your weaknesses, you need to know your weaknesses' weaknesses. As an example let's say you are playing Hieratics. Your weakness is Maxx "C", Battle Fader, and Swift Scarecrow. If you want to side against those hand traps, you can side in Mind Drain or, against Maxx "c" particularly, Droll & Lock Bird. Ideally, you need to know the weaknesses of the weaknesses of your deck, and be able to put in cards that counter your counter.

Another thing is if the opponent doesn't necessarily counter you. Your opponent is just a smarter player with a faster engine. Let's look at Dragon Rulers as an example. Dragon Rulers don't particularly counter anyone. They just spam really big beaters and pop things. Also, they only have 4 back row cards. (Raigeki Break, Phoenix Wind Blast, Return From the Different Dimension, and Mystical Space Typhoon.) They don't have a lot of lockdown if your deck is properly built. Their engine is banishing dragons to get searches and spamming the field. To stop banishing, there are cards like "Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer", Chaos Hunter", and "Imperial Iron Wall." To stop searching, there are cards like "Deck Lockdown", "Thunder King Rai-Oh", and "Mistake." There are some decks that if you slow them down enough by knowing their counters, you can just prevent them from doing anything, and you have a chance to access your win condition.

The next topic to look at is what the opponent will side. This depends on what the opponent expects you to side. I've had a situation where my opponent sided out "A Wingbeat of a Giant Dragon" so that the "Starlight Road" I sided in was dead. There is no real way to counter this. You just need to know how to deal with certain dead cards in certain situations. (Alternatively, the Starlight Road could be useful against Dark Hole. It's just managing resources.) If you are sitting in front of a person in real life, you can see how many cards he is siding to how many cards you are siding. If he is only siding 2-4 cards, he may be just siding to counter you. If siding more, he may also be siding to counter your counters that counter him. Either way, it's very hard to tell, there is no general rule.

The next thing to look at is: what cards are useless against the opponent? When looking at this, you need to have a very large general knowledge about the game. How a certain deck sides, how a certain deck plays, so on and so forth. In order to do this, a duelist must be able to learn about every deck, and what they do, and how to react to what they do. As an example, Hieratics generally don't run any traps. (Or very few if any.) In this case, the "Mystical Space Typhoon" that every main-decks becomes useless. There are situations with every deck. There is usually a card that is useless against one specific deck, or a card that isn't as useful to a specific deck. These cards are good to take out to give yourself a better chance against your opponent.

A final question to ask is, "What if all of my cards are useful?!" People ask me this a bit, normally you may have to slow down the engine to slow down their engine further. Either way, you will be required to be careful. Also, this is never always the case; sometimes it's just harder to see what to side out. (Everyone has this issue.) Generally, there is always something to side out. (If not, why bother making the side deck?)

Conclusively, siding is probably one of the hardest things to do because of the mind games required. However, siding properly is what can determine the difference between a good duelist and a great duelist.

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Finally:

I am going to post a list of decks what cards are decent side deck against them. I will explain how to counter each deck, or slow down each deck.

Dragon Rulers: Thunder King Rai-Oh, Imperial Iron Wall, Chaos Hunter, Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer, D.D. Crow, Prohibition (On Blaster and Tempest, or the Dragon Ruler the deck is based around.), Gozen Match, and Necrovalley. To scare them, you can generally run Maxx "C" and Swift Scarecrows.

The general idea behind countering/slowing down dragon rulers is: If they cannot banish, they cannot summon or get card advantage. In that sense, you can poke them down for game. The Maxx "C" lets you draw into your engine faster. The Swift Scarecrows prevent One Turn Kills that they can pull.

The general idea here is to prevent banishing and to prevent them from playing spell cards. A lot of their main cards require banishing or banished targets. (Such as Spellbook of Fate, High Priestess of Prophecy, Spellbook of Eternity, and Spellbook of Life.) Another general idea is just to shut down the idea of spell cards completely. Curse of Darkness inflicts 1000 damage every time a spell card is played. They need to use 4 cards to get rid of it. (3 cards + spellbook of fate.) 2 curse of darkness makes them take 8000 lifepoints unless they can priestess. The second set of cards I mentioned generally completely shut down spellbooks if played right.

Okay, honestly, this list could be much longer, but basically, Hieratics special summon out of the deck a lot, and use a lot of light monster's effects. Typically, they tribute something, an effect happens in the graveyard that allows them to special summon a normal dragon out of the deck. Light-Imprisoning mirror, Soul Drain, and Skill Drain stop that. Maxx "C", again, allows you to draw into your engine and block a One Turn Kill (OTK) with something like battle fader or swift scarecrow. Traps can be used to stop the deck, however, they do run "Wingbeat of a Giant Dragon." (This card is like a heavy storm. You would need Starlight Road for this.) Traps, if they don't destroy them, you just win the game because they suicide into your traps.

In the hybrid build, Gozen Match can stop them from xyz'ing. They typically run Luster Dragon #2 or Typhoon #2 to compliment Blaster and Tempest. In this situation, they summon something, you can flip gozen match after the summon, and the second material can't do anything.

Dark Worlds typically have effects that resolve in the graveyard. If you can prevent graveyard effects, you win. If you kill their draw power (Giant Spell Count), you win, if you banish them, they're stuck for a while. Additionally, if you keep them from discarding, you win. Keep in mind, they do not need effects on the field, so effect veilers and skill drains are useless. All of their effects are graveyard based. Also, they tend to screw around with your hand a lot, so be careful of that. Since heavy storm is banned, you could just set everything so they don't mess with your hand.

Bujins: (Requested by #hailsanta)

Light-Imprisoning Mirror, Mind Drain, Soul Drain, Prohibition (Targetting the problem card in the graveyard.) Possibly Royal Decree. Another set is Smashing Ground, Fissure, etc. Ideally, you want cards that can get rid of cards on the field without targetting them.

The first set of cards allow you to negate their effects from the hand and the graveyard. This stops them from doing anything. This is the hardest lockdown you can do to your opponent for this match-up. The second set allows you to clear the field and commit to direct attacks while they can't do anything. The most ideal situation is to negate all of their grave and hand effects. In that situation, they really can't do much but drop normal traps on you, in which case, any well balanced deck has already prepared for.

Fire Fist: (Requested by #hailsanta)

Prohibition (Calling anything that kills or prevents your spells and traps from going off, especially dragon and gyokku), Fiendish Chain, Effect Veiler, Mirror Force, Dimensional Prison.... (Long list of common traps to kill attackers here.)Also, you can side in Fairy Wind and Overworked.

The easiest way to beat firefist is to run a bunch of traps.Sure they have Gyokku, but if you have a heavy trap count, they can only gyokku 3 cards. Other than that, they just pop and attack. If you prevent them from using cards that pop, you just win right there. Since they rely on their own support too much, they don't have many things that can pop your back row besides MST and Gyokku. Also, you can MST their tenki to stop them from searching. Traps will just kill them all. Fairy Wind and Overworked just kill their spells and monsters at the same time, essentially, if you aren't boosting yourself, it's a harpie's feather duster and raigeki.

As a tip, don't attack them if they have a facedown unless you have a Forbidden Lance. Their facedowns are generally cards that boost their attack, or lower your's. When the deal damage or destroy something, they generally get effects to go off which allow them to add more cards to their field or hand.

This deck is like every other effect-based deck. Negate their effects and you win. They bounce cards with effects, which is annoying. Ideally, just stop their effects and you auto win since they can't do anything. They have normal traps like every other deck, prepare for that as well. Big monsters they have are Sombres, Pleiades, and M7. Sombres sets up the plays for the other two. Negate Sombres and they will have a rough time doing anything else. First turn Pleiades is a bitch to deal with. Ideally, you want to set your entire hand so they only choose one card (a bluff) to send back to your hand. M7 is the deck's recycler. The other card, Omega, prevents constellars from being affects by your spells and traps. But if you have light mirror on board already, it doesn't matter anymore.

This deck is weird. It's a very trap heavy deck generally. Their best play is Summon Ophion and set 5 cards. They have no way of getting hand back once it is lost, so use that to your advantage. D.D. crow helps against Kerykion, who almost always instantly allows an Ophion play. Prohibition will help against big monsters and some plays, also, it burns the opponent's MST. Because they are so reliant on the back row, destroying back row helps a lot, and Decree stuns them for a while. Tsukuyomi sets Ophion, and they can't do much about it. Prideful Roar allows any monster to run over Ophion. Also, if you summon a monster bigger than 2800, you almost always automatically win.

Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed. I am a bit lazy to write everything out in terms of all the decks I would love to write about how to counter. If you want more, post them in the comments and/or message me on Dueling Network. I will edit this post for your needs later likely. I am likely going to edit this post on my own when I find more deck ideas that need to be countered, or decks that people as a group want to counter.

Last edited by Asian_Pichu on Fri Nov 01, 2013 10:33 am; edited 4 times in total

I like this. It's actually well thought-out, the counters to each of those mainstream decks (Outside of hieratics, I never see those anymore.) The only thing I see, is Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror on Dark Worlds. If I remember correctly, that doesn't work against them. Now correct me if I'm wrong, however. Don't want to be spreading false information.

Shadow Imprisoning mirror does not work on Grapha summon, it works on effects, which is the engine of the deck. Grapha's summon is a summon condition (Like Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning.)

edit: The mirror works on everything else except the Grapha summon. But that just means they get a 3k vanilla beatstick every turn.